The Cutprice Guignol

Alright, sometimes I plan what I’m going to write here, and sometimes I just wake up and it hurts and I need to talk about it, alright? Alright. Alright!

When I say it hurts, I’m referring to the fact that, twixt my thighs, lives a part of my body that randomly likes to turn into a wasp’s nest of discomfort and pain and ugh. I’ve written about dealing with vaginismus before, which is what my diagnosis has been for the last few years, but occasionally, even when I’m just sitting about minding my own clitness and doing nothing that should set off the pain, it decides to rock up anyway and get in the way of my life.

And look, most of the time I can handle that, I can – I can remind myself that, for the most part, I have a body that functions and is healthy and can carry me through my life without too much interference. But there are days, like today, when the pain is just here and I am angry about it.

There’s little that makes me feel out of place in my body like knowing that it is working against me. I have spent a long time trying to be in my body, not to hold the way it looks or the way it functions against me. But that’s near fucking impossible when this pain is here for no good reason. If you haven’t dealt with chronic pain, I think it’s a hard thing to understand, but it feels like a betrayal to have your body work against you in this way. That loss of control, that feeling of being unable to make your on being obey the basic function of do not hut if there is nothing to hurt for, that’s a specific and particularly gruelling frustration that sometimes makes me want to sit down and cry more than the pain does.

Add to that the memory of all the times that I was told that I was imagining this or inventing it or making it up for attention, and I start wondering if I am making all of this up after all, even after the diagnosis, even after years of dealing with it. This is meant to be my body, a place that purely and more than anything else in the world, should be my home. But that doesn’t work when there is someone in your home kicking over bins and smashing plates and setting fires. Maybe the thought that I am making it all up makes more sense. Even if that doesn’t change the pain, even if it never has before. The pain feels like an invasion, even though it’s coming from me.

There is no decent conclusion to this article; sorry if you came looking for one. But sometimes, it helps to shout it out into the universe at large and get it off my chest. Have a good weekend, one and all, and please join me for your regularly scheduled snarking anew once more. Oh, and if you want to read more of my writing on vaginismus, please gab a copy of my book, Rape Jokes!